Vitamin C Being Used to Treat Coronavirus Patients

Everyone's looking for a treatment or cure for the coronavirus. It may be as simple as vitamin C.

At two Northwell Health hospitals in New York, doctors are injecting COVID-19 patients with 15000 mg of asorbic acid several times a day.

“The patients who received vitamin C did significantly better than those who did not get vitamin C,” says Dr. Andrew G. Weber, a pulmonologist at Northwell Health, about the use of the supplement in Shanghai. “It helps a tremendous amount, but it is not highlighted because it’s not a sexy drug. It makes all the sense in the world to try and maintain this level of vitamin C."

Patients are also being dosed with the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, the antibiotic azithromycin and various biologics and blood thinners, Weber adds.

Intravenous vitamin C for coronavirus patients is currently being investigated at Zhongnan Hospital in Wuhan, China, where the virus began.

Ascobic acid is also found in many fruits and vegetables.

"Vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin, so it is not stored in body fats. The supply of vitamin C must be continually replenished. It has a variety of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and vascular effects."

Studies Show Vitamin C Is Effective in Treating ICU Patients

New York-based Dr. Mary Clifton agrees that vitamin C should be used to treat the virus.

"Exposure to viruses seems inevitable," she tells CelebStoner. "After exposure, the extent of the infection is largely determined by the individual body's response to disease. Some of this is determined by genetics and the overall state of health. Regardless of the shape you are in at this moment, there may be ways that you can protect your body from developing a more severe response to infection."

Regarding vitamin C, she refers to several studies during which vitamin C was adminstered to ICU patients and resulted in decreased duration of respiratory failure and the time spent on the ventilator by 18.2%, improved endothelial function, lowered blood pressure, increased contractility of the heart, decreased irregular heart rhythms, decreased blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetics, decreased bronchoconstriction, and shortened the duration and frequency of a cold.

Dr. Clifton recommends people supplement with 6000 mg of vitamin C daily as well as 2000 mg of vitamin D and 25 mg of selenium.

Vitamin C supplementation, she says, also decreased the need for blood-pressure supporting medications like dobutamine and vasopressin, decreased fluid requirements in critically ill patients and decreased the time spent on the ventilator for patients in respiratory failure.

"Vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin, so it is not stored in body fats," Clifton explains. "The supply of vitamin C must be continually replenished. It has a variety of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and vascular effects. In the general population, the overall presence of deficiency is around 7.1%, but in the hospitalized population, the deficiency rate is about 47.3% Levels are especially decreased in severe illness.

"In conditions where the body is under stress, such as surgery or infection, vitamin C metabolism is changed and vitamin C levels can decline dramatically. Much higher doses are often needed in critically ill patients to increase plasma vitamin C levels to the normal range. The highest vitamin C levels in the body are found in the adrenal gland and the brain. In the adrenal gland, vitamin C supports healthy responses to stress. In the nervous system, supplementation with vitamin C improves the mood of acutely ill patients and may have additional psychological benefits for critically ill patients in the ICU.

"Even though supplementation with Vitamin C has proven effects on many conditions, it's likely that many essential vitamin and mineral deficiencies contribute to the severity of illness, including selenium and vitamin D, and possibly magnesium and thiamine, to name a few."

Clifton recommends people supplement with 6000 mg of vitamin C daily as well as 2000 mg of vitamin D and 25 mg of selenium.